I tried to teach Benghui the importance of Hari Kemerdekaan. I might as well have tried to explain the flavor of champagne to him. All he knew was Ultraman was showing on the telly today so he wanted to come home as soon as possible.
We were in town to buy a present for him for his hard work and improvement in the school results. We had already promised him. He chose this two books. It costs a whopping Rm17.00 for this two books. Mrs BB insisted I keep my promise. 
I told Benghui at this rate, I would soon be bankrupt and he laughed. Mrs BB also laughed. I don’t know why the two of them always gang up on me.
A new idea came to my mind tonight. I decided to drive them around at night and see the beautifully decorated lights for the occasion. Alas it was like any other night. Similarly I saw few signs of flags when I was looking for signs of festivity to show Benghui in the afternoon. People are just too busy this year, I think.
Except for events at this place in the evening, everything seemed quite normal. It was a wash out as it was raining.
As we couldn’t do anything because of the rain, we stopped at MacDonalds. We had grilled chicken foldover. I explained to him it was because he had shown progress in his school work. He couldn’t believe his good luck. He promised he would strive harder for his weak subjects : Chinese and Chinese essay. I am hopeless when it comes to this subjects and he has to fend for himself.
Benghui : “Daddy, I am not a small boy any more. I will work harder.”
This pleased me tremendously and I was so proud. Then he dropped a bombshell. “My coach says an arrow ( a prop in wushu ) costs Rm150.00 only. Very cheap.” This time even Mrs BB was caught unawares. We still have an expensive keyboard abandoned after a few weeks of use. Will this wushu arrow be another piece of expensive clutter in the home in the future?
Will he able to sustain his interest in wushu? The Rm150.00 question.
bengbeng, i googled and found that the arrow is a stance in wushu, not a real arrow. this link shows (amongst other stances) that stance, called a bow and arrow stance
http://alexng.net/fsuwushu/reference.html
so what is that Rm150 for? to teach it? whatever, even if it is a prop arrow, it is not cheap. u should tell that to benghui, so he does not get the wrong idea about money. he must be repeating what they told him, but tell him Rm150 can feed a family for at least 2wks. right? maybe more, so it is not cheap. why so much money to learn wushu? it looks like that is a v expensive hobby.
the thing is we dont know if his interest will b a temporary fling. as for the arrow, it is a cylindrical shiny sort of prop used in the stance u mentioned in the link.
i remembered when i was young,
if i say something like, “this one so/very cheap le, xxx bucks only.”
i would get a stare and lecture from Mami.
“u are not earning any sen, and don’t add an ‘only’ behind da price. there’s other family which are in poverty and merely can afford a meal and u are lucky cos Daddy and Mami work so hard so that u can have this.
150bucks is not cheap lo…
he got the same lecture
happy national day!
I gave my kids KFC treats too for their progress. Actually it was more of like kena con. I promise my girl if she got 90 for any of her papers I will treat her to KFC but I never expected for it to happen. Oh well! My boy now has more sense on the $$ matters because I always ask them to look at the price tag when buying things and then compare it to their pocket money. Now at least when they want to buy things they look and the price and anything above RM3 is a no-no unless I say okay. LOL.
Also thanks for the permission, I’ll send you the link of the site after I finish with it.